FRIENDS OF SCIENCE SOCIETY P.O.Box 23167, Mission P.O. , AB T2S 3B1 1-888-789-9597

E-mail: [email protected]

May 1, 2014

Association for Psychological Science BY FAX AND REGISTERED MAIL 1133 15th Street, NW Suite 1000 Washington, DC 20005 USA

Contact Information +1 202.293.9300 (phone) +1 202.293.9350 (fax)

ATTN: Eric Eich, Editor - Psychological Science

Dear Mr. Eich,

RE: Request to retract Stephan Lewandowsky et al (2013): "NASA Faked the Moon Landing - Therefore, (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science"http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/03/25/0956797612457686.abstract

Friends of Science Society respectfully request that the paper "NASA Faked the Moon Landing - Therefore, (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science" be withdrawn on grounds of violating the spirit and intent of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) ethical guidelines specifically “1.5 champion freedom of expression.”

A review of Stephan Lewandowsky’s published papers reveals that “NASA Faked the Moon Landing - Therefore, (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science” is the only professional paper by him, to that date in time, with an inflammatory title.

As experts in the area of social psychology, it would seem to have been self-evident that, in the contentious world of climate science, such a title would immediately subject any dissenting climate scientist or individual to public humiliation - thus violating the COPE principle of championing freedom of expression from the outset.

However there are other grounds upon which this paper should be disqualified, in our opinion.

We dispute Lewandowsky’s findings in that his claims about evidence are incorrect.

Lewandowsky et al claim in their abstract: “Although nearly all domain experts agree that emissions are altering the world’s climate, segments of the public remain unconvinced by the scientific evidence. Internet blogs have become a platform for denial of climate change, and bloggers have taken a prominent role in questioning climate science.”

These statements are incorrect. 1) Lewandowsky makes an incorrect assumption of + 90% (typically cited as 97%) consensus on climate change science (specifically Anthropogenic Global Warming). Many domain experts disagree. The cited references within the Lewandowsky study are shown to be far below a 90% consensus. In the Andregg et al (2010) survey only 66% agreed with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change declarations on climate change or its causes; 44% disagreed and signed public documents to that effect. In the Doran & Zimmerman (2009) opinion poll only 2.4% self-selected climate scientists (qualifications unknown) explicitly state agreement with two opinion questions that have no empirical parameters about climate factors. See: http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/97_Consensus_Myth.pdf

2) In September of 2013 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC) admitted there is a hiatus in global warming of some 16+ years and that despite a rise in carbon dioxide, warming had stagnated. Likewise, these climate experts state in the Sept.27, 2013 Technical Summary on pages 114 and 115 that there is low confidence in any trends based on the evidence, which disputes the Somerville (2011) claim that climate patterns are changing. These “Key Uncertainties” are included as the last pages of this document for your convenience. Original source see:http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_TS_FINAL.pdf

3) Dozens of leading, expert scientists (climate scientists, economists, IPCC expert reviewers) use internet blogs to communicate their findings to the public such as the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change,http://www.nipccreport.org/index.html (presents in an appendix the names of 31,478 American scientists who have signed a petition saying "there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."), World Climate Report - Patrick Michaels http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/about-us/ , - Steve McIntyre http://climateaudit.org/ , YourEnvironment.ca - Ross McKitrick http://www.yourenvironment.ca/ , Roger Pielke. Jr http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.ca/ , Judith Curry http://judithcurry.com/ , Sciencebits -NirShaviv http://www.sciencebits.com/ , and many more. These dedicate scientists use the ‘common man’s’ blog to communicate the complexities of their area of expertise in a timely, readable way for the public and interested colleagues. A social psychologist like Lewandowsky is unqualified to pass judgement on any climate science blogger like these, and the manner and style of his paper lumps ‘all’ bloggers in as ‘rejectionists.’ Referring to Lewandowsky’s footnote 2 he suggests that the motivation behind climate science blogs is for the ‘...use of rhetoric to create the appearance of debate where there is none.’ Based on the level of scientific expertise of the authors of

2 the blogs noted above, one cannot say there is no debate about climate science or that bloggers are merely using rhetoric.

4) Judith Curry is one such expert scientist who also has a blog. She testified to the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Jan. 16, 2014 that carbon dioxide is likely not a main factor in climate change based on current evidence, therefore Lewandowsky’s premise is faulty. See:

5) The Dutch government is calling for an overhaul of the IPCC to include natural factors, not just focus on human factors affecting climate change - something many dissenting scientists have been calling for over many years - indicating that these demands are not ‘rejection’ or ‘denial’ or the ravings of a lunatic blogger - but that there are serious problems with the IPCC and its scientific assessments. See:

Friends of Science Society is a climate science review organization. We are a group of professional earth and atmospheric scientists who have been reviewing climate science literature since 2002.

This past year we were alarmed to read of the Cook et al (2013) claim that there is a 97% consensus on climate science. Therefore we undertook to deconstruct the main surveys cited in support of this statement - that of Oreskes (2004), Doran & Zimmerman (2009), Anderegg et al (2010) and Cook et al (2013).

We found that the claim of a 97% consensus is based on math manipulations and that there is no consensus of the kind. In fact, in 3 of the 4 studies (2 of which Lewandowsky cites in his paper as evidence) there are only 1-3% of participants who explicitly agree with the IPCC declarations on Anthropogenic Global Warming; one study cited by Lewandowsky claimed 66% consensus, though terms, definition and parameters were not constant with other studies. Most participants held no position whatsoever. (See attached graphs).

Though we cannot speak to the details, we note that other researchers are also calling for a retraction of the Lewandowsky et al work on other grounds. Steve McIntyre writes "Lewandowsky Ghost-wrote Conclusions of UWA Ethics Investigation into 'Hoax'”. http://climateaudit.org/2014/03/24/lewandowsky-ghost-wrote-conclusions-of-uwa-ethics- investigation-into-hoax/

Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick are probably best known for their coauthored work deconstructing the infamous “Hockey Stick” graph which alleged that there was very little temperature variation in the past thousand years before 1900 followed by a sharp temperature rise during the 20th century, represented by the ‘blade’ of the . McIntyre and McKitrick found errors in the computational methods that loaded too much weight on a small set of biased tree ring proxies and understated the uncertainty about

3 historical climate variability. This effectively eliminated the previously well documented Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.

This meant the graph showed extreme and unusual warming since the 1900’s, when in fact there have been numerous, cyclical cold and warm periods, as is clear from the Greenland Ice Core analysis below. The “Hockey Stick” deconstructed by McIntyre and McKitrick is no longer used by the IPCC.

McIntyre's post Anatomy of the Lewandowsky Scam gives the basic information above the fake responses to Lewandowsky's survey used in the paper. http://climateaudit.org/2012/09/08/lewandowsky-scam/

The post Lewandowsky’s Fake Results shows that after removing the most grotesque fake responses, "Only one “skeptic” in the revised dataset purported to believe the Moon conspiracy, while 4 “warmists” purported to believe in it. (All 5 responses are probably fake.)" http://climateaudit.org/2012/09/13/lewandowskys-fake-results/

There are other concerns about the Lewandowsky methods. In this article, Lewandowsky’s Fake Correlation, McIntyre shows that the responses from two scammers who claim to believe in all conspiracy theories contributed up to 100% of the Lewandowsky's reported correlations between the conspiracy theories. These statements may be useful in your review, though they are supplemental to our request that the paper be withdrawn. http://climateaudit.org/2012/09/18/lewandowskys-fake-correlation

Regarding social psychology and the influential methods of swaying public opinion, in our 97% deconsensus report, Friends of Science explores the research on 'social proof' as a psychological motivator, based on the work of Robert Cialdini. The work of social affiliation by Stanley Schacter, Irving Sarnoff and Phillip Zimbardo shows how people are more likely to

4 socially affiliate with a majority - while the work of Kipling D. Williams on the Kiss of Social Death demonstrates how ostracization is the "kiss of social death."

We suspect that Philip Zimbardo would call the Lewandowsky paper a case of manufacturing 'dangerous conformity.' That would seem to be far outside the ethical realm or intent of Psychological Science, Sage Journals, the Association for Psychological Science and COPE, as well as far and away from the APA’s Code of Conduct which broadly includes the principles of integrity, justice, and respect for people’s rights and dignity. http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/principles.pdf

People have a right to dissent - indeed Lewandowsky et al give a brief nod to this notion saying: “Rejection of science must be distinguished from true scepticism, which may prompt the revision of a scientific claim on the basis of evidence and reasoned theorizing. Skepticism is not only at the core of scientific reasoning but has also been shown to improve people's discrimination between true and false information (e.g., Lewandowsky, Stritzke, Oberauer, &Morales, 2005, 2009).”

We believe the evidence presented herein demonstrates that false information forms a large part of Lewandowsky’s premise, that many aspects of the paper raise questions, and that his scientific claims about climate science and carbon dioxide (CO2) are indeed now subject to revision based on the evidence.

Consequently, on these many grounds, we request that you withdraw Stephan Lewandowsky’s paper “NASA Faked the Moon Landing - Therefore, (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science.”

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Len Maier, P. Eng. President cc: Sage Journals [email protected]

5

97% consensus* in 4 surveys ?

Oreskes 2004 Doran & Anderegg et al Cook et al 2013 Zimmerman 2010 2009‡

Database 928 10,000 1,372 12,000

Respondents/D 928 77 100 4,010 ata Used Climate specialists Most published State a position on that answered climate scientists AGW question 2.

Claim 75% 97% 97% 97% AGW cause most AGW is implicitly agree implicitly agree (more than 50%) “Significant” AGW is significant AGW is significant

Actual 13 of 928 AGW 75 of 10,000 903 of 1372 65 of 12,000 >50%† AGW > 10% AGW > 10% AGW > 50%

Actual % of 1.2% 2.4% 66% 0.54% agreement*

NO CONSENSUS - NO SCIENCE

• *The official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change*The official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) position is that human activities caused more than 90% of the warming since the mid-20th century, AGW>90%. The surveys only evaluated if AGW is “Significant” or caused >50% of warming. • ‡ An opinion poll, not based on empirical evidence and of no scientific value; credentials of 79 unknown. • † Based on the results of Dr. ’s re-run of the Oreskes research in 2005.

6

7

8

9

10

11

12